Regular readers of my blog (known as “The Mindful Entrepreneur”), might be slightly shocked that rather than landing in the familiar blue scenery of personal site; you are now re-directed here, to a blog held within the home of my web design & services company. Now, if you’ve got this far, and haven’t immediately left through shock or a slight feeling of disdain, firstly, thank-you, secondly, I’d like to share my findings & learnings from this process with you.

Your first question may be “So why did you do it?” (if you’re not, just bear with me whilst I explain anyway)…

So, Why did you do it?

For a while I’ve had a “blockage” between writing blog posts purely to help people (in this case by being mindful, applying it to business & hopefully making your lives a little easier and fruitful), and promoting my business. I felt somewhat bad selling any services or promoting advertising of any kind on my blog, because it felt “cheap”, it felt like as soon as that happened, the content of the site was merely there as a lure so that I could make money from it. Of course, that would never have been true, but the mentality was there none the less.

I guess this mentality stems from my own disdain for cheap marketing tactics, spammy blogs or other promotional methods which are designed purely to sell products that you neither want or care about. At the same time, these products and content usually serve little purpose in helping the reader, and in fact just form another piece of junk to wade through – an all but common occurrence throughout our lives.

Essentially, I didn’t want to be associated with this “shit bucket” of sales folk, who are viewed by many (and sometimes unfairly, it must be said) as “evil marketers”.

But, then it hit me (although I’d known this all along). I wasn’t one of those people. I’m not driven by making endless sales and bringing meaningless figures into my balance sheets. I’m actually driven by helping other people – mainly because it makes me feel good, so you could even call it selfish in that respect. This content, I’m writing is there to help others. Like wise, I know that I can offer really good services through my business, which can help small businesses & charities immensely, and which they might not be aware of; instead getting stuck with some low-life, non-caring, overpriced money grabbing marketing company (sorry, this stuff really bugs me). So, once that connection was made in my apparently slow mind, it suddenly made perfect sense to combine the two to create the biggest, and most helpful impact for the readers I’m targeting my content at.

Don’t Spread Yourself Thinly

Additionally, by having an existing blog on Own the Web, which had little direction and wasn’t receiving nearly as much love as it deserved, combined with a separate personal blog, my time was split thinly between the two. This meant that my full attention wasn’t going into either of them, and therefore this impacted on the number of visitors coming to the sites and the quality of the content.

Combining the two blogs into one, has alleviated this problem in a single handed swoop, meaning the content I produce will be better, with more direction, and the help I can provide will be better. Ultimately it just felt right in my mind. It frees up some mental space and it creates a focus point for pouring my efforts into.

With some self reflection, as with a lot of things, the basis for not doing this earlier could be grounded in fear. Fear that people may judge these decisions, and be deterred from reading a blog on what is essentially, a money making site. But with further thinking, I realised, as long as the content of that blog is of the highest quality, and the products offered throughout the site can also serve the reader – where necessary – then it makes perfect sense. Frankly the proof is in the pudding; if the content is good, people will come regardless. If people are put off, then that’s due to their own stereotypical views.

Don’t Doubt Your Business

Here’s another key part of this process change; by separating out my personal blog from my business, I was unconsciously casting doubt about my Business. Almost that it wasn’t good enough to associate my post with – in effect, I was telling myself that people wouldn’t appreciate these posts if they were linked to my business. In hindsight, that’s clearly a load of shash.

Because I DO believe in my business, and I know I can really help improve other businesses, this is the perfect place to share my blog content; not only does this put more of my own self confidence into the business, but it also allows me to build Own the Web based around my own values, abilities and vision. Own the Web, will in effect become much more a part of me & through my writings here, is inevitably linked to my core values. After all, I’m a strong advocate that every body should promote their values through their business – your values are what gives your business personality, and in effect helps you connect with the customers that you most want to work with.

What will Change?

Mindful Entre… *ahem* Marketeer

As far as content goes, it will remain along the same lines as what I was producing on The Mindful Entrepreneur – online business productivity – with a slight shift to Marketing – hence the name change to Mindful Marketeer.

As my life is grounded in mindfulness and my focus is now increasingly more on marketing & website design, it makes much more sense to do this, and provide content which I hope you will still appreciate.

So, going back to the title – it’s for all these reasons, that I’m not sorry I’ve moved the blog – In fact, I’m very pleased about it. At the same time, I’m not sorry I didn’t do it earlier either. After all, as with any thing in life; if I had, I wouldn’t have learnt all of this. Everything we’ve done has led us to this point – me writing this post, you reading it and whatever unfolds because of it.

I’ll drink to that (green tea please).

If you’ve got any comments on this or questions, give me a holla on Twitter or drop me an email! If you’d like to share this article on social media, that would also be appreciated. Thanks for listening!

About the author: I’m the Founder of Own the Web (aka. Mindful Marketeer), & I’m passionate about helping good causes, local & small businesses grow by bringing clarity to situations. I do this through my work at Own the Web, whilst practising mindfulness & blogging about it here.
Other quick facts also include I’m a vegan, an individualist, equality champion & a mindful free thinker. Connect with me on Twitter or Peter Leigh on Google+.